George Clooney on fame, failure and a life in movies

George Clooney is not Jay Kelly.

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ADAM Sandler, Emily Mortimer, George Clooney, Noah Baumbach, Laura Dern (AP)

((AP))

That much he is sure of. But when a famous movie star of a certain age decides to take on a role as a famous movie star of a certain age, full of regrets and realizing that he's missed out on so much of his own life in pursuit of greatness and fame, it does invite some questions.Clooney, 64, wasn't thinking about all that when Noah Baumbach called him about the part. He was just thinking about how hard it is to get good roles the older he gets.

"I was predisposed to want to do it before I even read it," Clooney told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

He wasn't the only one. Adam Sandler, Laura Dern and Billy Crudup were just a few of the many stars of "Jay Kelly," streaming on Netflix on Friday, who pretty much signed on script unread. Baumbach's name, as the writer-director behind "Marriage Story" and "The Squid and the Whale," has that kind of effect on actors, from those he's worked with before, to those who've just admired him from afar.

"Jay Kelly," which Baumbach wrote with Emily Mortimer, wasn't just a clever character study but a lovingly clear-eyed portrait of the strange business of Hollywood moviemaking and the personalities involved the managers (Sandler), the publicists (Dern), the makeup artists (Mortimer), the best actor from acting class who didn't make it (Crudup), and, of course, the one who did (Clooney).

"It's so lush in its appreciation for the sort of carnival life of actors and the proximity to some kind of gilded, glorious life that's always tantalizingly close," Crudup said. "We use movie stars as some kind of analogy about what it means to be successful and have a happy life, when in fact, that's smoke and mirrors. And if you're too busy looking out for that, you're gonna miss the life that you have."

Fame, failure and figuring out what matters